Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned author, spoke at Roger Williams University about his experiences as a journalist and author.  His most recent nonfiction story, “Mountains Beyond Mountains” was the central topic of discussion. 

The book focuses on two main issues, the global health crises, tuberculosis and AIDS.  Kidder shadowed Dr. Paul Farmer, an ambitious doctor hell bent on establishing clinics and hospitals in Haiti.  The success of his novel has led to traveling throughout the country in order to speak to college students who have read the book as part of the school’s curriculum.

Kidder evokes relaxation and serenity.  He is an approachable professional who was truly encouraging to the Roger Williams students who attended his discussion.  His set-up was atypical for speakers.  He did not lecture; instead chairs were placed in a circle.  Kidder made the situation a welcoming environment.

Aside from talking about “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Kidder touched upon his life as a writer.  Kidder has written several books and had work published in magazines throughout his lifetime.  He explained that writing a book is an enormous commitment.  Research can almost seem endless; in fact, research is supposedly the fun part.  It is commonly the editor, at least in Kidder’s case, who determines when the research ends and the writing begins. 

Kidder’s writing career began during his sophomore year of college.  He felt strong impulses to continue writing after taking a class focusing on Short Stories/Fiction.  Aside from his intuition, the thought of being his own boss proved to be an appealing perk. 

Kidder seems to be a pretty good boss.  With a Pulitzer Prize under his belt and several successful books, his career is what a writer strives to achieve.  His inspirations for all of his pieces come almost accidently though.  He believes inspiration comes from everywhere and anywhere, but a good writer or journalist must go out into the world and experience things first hand to find a good story. 

“Writing is the only real thinking I do,” Kidder commented.

Lawncare Decision Graphic

The first step I did was figuring out how I could represent the necessary words as images.  I began with the Yes and No since they appear the most frequently on the graphic.  I chose to do a thumbs up symbol for yes and thumbs down for no.  At first drawing a thumbs up/thumbs down was no a problem but as I continued the project the drawing got more tedious.  I am still happy with how the thumbs looks though and I do feel that is a universal sign.  The next step was drawing turf grass.  It is difficult to display turf grass in a creative manner aside from a simple bed of grass.  Hopefully the image I created is effective!

There is the large starting image on the left side which then branches off into yes and no(thumbs up/thumbs down).  Since the yes side stops after only one box I chose to use a not allowed sign.  Since stop signs are not necessarily universal I thought that the image I created would be better.  The box on the no side consists of a thermometer with a degrees symbol of 90 degrees or above.  All of the information comes from the paragraph given in class.  Continuing off the thermometer branch is dry grass.  Off of each dry grass branch is a pest in grass, a.k.a. destroying grass.  Choosing a graphic for the pest was the most challenging.  I am not a wonderful artists and therefore had to choose a fairly simple image.  My pest most closely resembles a caterpillar but I still feel as though the image gets the message across.  Branching off the pest in grass is the proper treatment for the turf grass.

At first I did not understand the purpose of the project; it is difficult to think of symbols that will be able to reach the entire world.  For most people, including myself, if a symbol is familiar to you then it is very difficult to imagine it not being familiar to someone else.  Choosing universal symbols was the most challenging step for me, but helped me to think outside of the box.  This project has proved to be very beneficial in order to improve my visual communication skills.   I feel as though if I can create graphics about turf grass I could probably do several different topics.  

In Class Collage